Books: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

Quiet

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain (Random House, 352 pages, $18 softcover) — Take heart, oh quiet ones. One third to one half of Americans identify as introverts. (Probably more in Canada, “cause we’re nicer,” and because it’s cold up here in the Great White North and isn’t that recent big snowfall a perfect reason to hunker down at home and read a good book.)

How satisfying to know that you (we!) are not alone.

Beside every over-talker, loud-laugher, meeting-dominator and social butterfly there are kindred spirits thinking, strategizing, inventing and staring awkwardly at their feet, wanting — nay needing — some space and time alone somewhere — anywhere — to re-energize.

The author of this book, a Princeton and Harvard Law School grad and an introvert, Susan Cain, has given us a great gift in this well-researched and eye-opening volume. Without ever succumbing to a simplistic us/them approach, she busts long-held myths about introverts and offers real life examples of how differently-temperamented individuals can achieve new levels of communication and understanding — proving that introverts and extroverts can live in harmony to the betterment of both.

The differences aren’t always obvious. Cain shares a delightful anecdote about a dynamic, well-loved, yet surprisingly introverted, Canadian professor who laughingly told the late CBC radio host Peter Gzowski how he needed downtime between lectures and would retreat to “cubicle eight” in the men’s room. Gzowski, without skipping a beat, quipped that you could find him in cubicle nine.

So whether you’re an introvert, an extrovert or in the middle and an “ambivert” (take the test in the book), Quiet should leave you with a profound sense of Vive la différence!

Susan Koswan is a Kitchener writer. She did take the Quiet test and is pretty sure she’s an ambivert.